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Cynthetiq · 10-11-2008, 05:03 PM

pay attention to newspapers.... local or your destination. You'll notice that the last few posts I've made have come from the New York Times.

When we locate a destination, I start subscribing and bookmarking as local as I can find of the destination. This is two fold reasoning. I get to know the location in some fashion as we travel about, I'll see recognizeable names that aren't necessarily in Fodor's and DK Travel Guides. Second, because locals can't afford what tourists pay for things on a regular basis, so I'll find cheaper off the beaten path finds.

Quote:

View: Frugal New York
Source: NYTimes
posted with the TFP thread generator

Frugal New York
October 12, 2008
Frugal New York
By MATT GROSS
AT its most generous, New York bestows a rare gift upon visitor and resident alike: it makes you feel young. Stride down its granite-steel-and-glass corridors, and your viewpoint is instantly that of a child, eyes directed forever upward.

But New York offers a deeper sense of youth, too, the earnest expectation that one day, out of the blue, your real, true life will finally begin. A subway scene inspires a novel, an encounter at the bodega nets a stock pick, a salsa class sets you down a new career path — whatever it is, it will seem predestined, a turning point, the kind of epiphany that, as Cindy Adams would insist, can only happen here, kids.

Unfortunately, the corollary of youth is poverty, and New York has a way of reminding everyone from hourly wage strivers to uptown trust-funders that it is always possible to have more, and to spend more. The million-dollar studio apartment, the $50 restaurant entree, the $1,000 bottle of vodka — these are a capricious city’s perverse challenges to would-be Gatsbys.

Yet after a decade of living in New York City — nine years in Manhattan, 18 months in Brooklyn — I’ve learned that big-ticket amusements merely obscure the city’s more affordable (and more enjoyable) corners, something I was recently prepared to put to the test. One weekend in late September, my wife, Jean, and I set out to rediscover our hometown as frugal tourists, on a budget of $500, about $30 less than the rent on my very first apartment, a shared two-bedroom tenement on the edge of Chinatown.

Bargains like those are harder than ever to come by, especially if you’re a tourist uninterested in signing a yearlong lease. Jean and I first scoured the Web for affordable bed-and-breakfasts — and found all the good ones fully booked through the fall. Then we looked into vacation rentals through Craigslist, long a source of cheap (if not always legal) short-term sublets, and Roomorama.com, a newcomer, and turned up a few affordable possibilities (including a shared walk-up on Allen Street, our old block) before realizing that this was supposed to be a vacation, and we were all too familiar with cramped New York apartments.

So I settled on the Chelsea, perhaps the city’s most storied hotel, and discovered a forgotten bargain. Once home to Mark Twain and Dylan Thomas, Arthur Miller and Ethan Hawke, Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, the Chelsea is a haven for artists and bohemians. And despite changes in ownership and management, it still offers rooms for far less than just about anywhere else: $149 a night (pretax), a pittance in New York.

On a clear and cool Friday afternoon, Jean and I checked in. In the lobby, long-term residents and transients like us sat in armchairs near an unlighted fireplace, tapping on their laptops, watched over by a fat pink girl on a swing — a sculpture. Other “vaguely alarming artworks,” many donated as payment for rooms, lined the dim hallways and a “baronial staircase” — in the words of Joseph O’Neill, whose new novel “Netherland” is partly set at the Chelsea — swept up the hotel’s 10 floors.

Our room — No. 828, where the Beat writer Herbert Huncke once lived and the artist Elizabeth Peyton had her first show — was airy, crusty with age but crisp and clean, with a broad southern view, a Marimekko-esque duvet and big, soft towels curled up on the dresser like sleeping cats. The only drawback was that we had to share the bathroom down the hall. But given the hotel’s price, history and central location, we hardly cared — the Chelsea was a no-brainer.

One could probably spend an entirely entertaining weekend within the Chelsea, observing the antics of thin European tourists and oddball residents, but Jean and I had other plans. We caught the F train to the Museum of Modern Art, where admission, normally a prohibitive $20, is free on Friday evenings.

We admired Mikhael Subotzky’s photographs of South Africa — trash-pickers in the Vaalkoppies dump, a jackal hunter and his kills — and the fantastical array of creatures in the “Wunderkammer” exhibition, then descended to the museum’s basement for a free movie.

Set in Singapore but shot in New York, “The Letter” tells the tale of a planter’s wife who murders her former lover who’s left her for another woman. Aside from its historical importance — it was the first talkie shot in the city, according to the Museum of Modern Art — the 1929, 65-minute film features a surprisingly modern (and Oscar-nominated) performance by Jeanne Eagles as the pathological Leslie Crosbie, who ends the movie with the mad declaration, “I still love the man I killed!” (The film was remade with Bette Davis in a 1940s release that earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress.)

When the film let out, we walked north to the Parker Meridien hotel, crossed the polished marble floor of its airy lobby, ducked behind a maroon curtain and found ourselves in another tax bracket: Cheap-looking wood-paneled walls hung with “Sopranos” and Ramones posters. Elvis on the stereo. A little old lady in a housedress who kissed the employees good-bye. Cardboard signs written in magic marker. A line out the door. Welcome to Burger Joint, one of New York’s great open secrets.

Jean and I ordered at the counter, snagged a booth and attacked our very good burgers, fries, beer and soda — at $29, not the cheapest meal in Manhattan, but certainly the cheapest in a luxury Midtown hotel. Then a young man with a 1970s-pornography-star mustache approached us through the crowd and asked, “Yo, can I call dibs on your table?”

Sure. In New York, it’s dibs, not dollars, that matter.

EARLY the next morning, I went jogging down Hudson River Park, a stylishly landscaped parcel of waterfront that runs from Battery Park City, near the southern tip of the island, to 59th Street. For most of New York’s history, this zone was, uh, gritty, but now there are no traces of sailors, prostitutes, drug addicts or cruisers. I saw only sparkling piers, a Nike-sponsored runners’ hangout, dog walkers — a yuppie paradise.

Actually, the grittiest area was Battery Park City, a swarm of modern towers that were once derided for their soullessness but now seem an inextricable part of the city’s fabric. Chinese women were practicing tai chi there, while a homeless woman chattered to herself near the water.

I turned and headed home, making an eastward detour to City Bakery for coffee, tea, a whole-wheat croissant and a pressed chocolate sandwich ($8.50), then discovering a mid-19th-century Spanish-and-Portuguese Jewish cemetery on 21st Street near Avenue of the Americas. For two years, I’d worked around the corner from these slanting tombstones but never knew of their existence.

Conversely, I’d long known that the Metropolitan Museum of Art was essentially free — admission is pay-as-you-wish — but as a regular New Yorker I rarely took advantage. As budget-minded tourists, however, Jean and I braved the mid-Saturday crowds to see the inspiring J. M.W. Turner show that was about to close and paid the museum $2 for the privilege. (If you’re headed to the Met this month, I recommend the Jeff Koons installation on the rooftop sculpture garden, which closes on Oct. 26. The art is trippy and the setting offers unparalleled views of Central Park and the Manhattan skyline.)

We would’ve seen more, but hunger drove us into the street, onto the No. 6 train (using one-day unlimited Fun Passes, $7.50) and down to Curry Hill, the Indian business strip of Lexington Avenue between 26th and 30th Streets. Among the dozens of restaurants, some dives, others upscale, we chose the original, 32-year-old Curry in a Hurry, where rice, two decent curries, nan and unlimited salad cost about $10. In the sunlit dining room, where Bollywood movies show on a big TV, we tried to finish our meals ($21.12 in all), and Jean remarked on the diversity of the clientele: French tourists, Indian families, old-timers — none seemed to be in any particular hurry.

We, however, were. By scouring Time Out New York and New York Magazine, as well as FreeNYC.net and ClubFreeTime.com, I’d found dozens of enticing no-cost events. At 2 p.m. was a tour of Central Park’s Belvedere Castle. At 3, “Romeo and Juliet” on West 55th Street. At 5, Circus Amok in Washington Square Park; at 7:30, Calo Flamenco in East Harlem. Whenever we wanted, we could catch the ferry to Governors Island for the art show. The city was taunting us with impossible itineraries.

In the end, we rushed back down to Greenwich Village — by taxi, a $10 necessity — to catch a tour offered by Friends of the Hudson River Park. Henry Strouss, the knowledgeable leader, spent an hour on the area’s history, pointing out the sanitation station where Herman Melville had worked (it was a Customs office then) and the playground sprinkler that marks the mouth of what was, long ago, Minetta Creek. He showed us a new work by Richard Meier — the all-too-obvious glass towers — and one of his oldest, the renovation of Bell Labs into the Westbeth Artists Community.

All these things I felt I should already know — as New Yorkers feel we must — and yet the history of our city is endless, each block a trove of art, architecture, politics, music and literature that no one can ever fully master. Anyone who says they know it all is, well, a know-it-all.

Which is what I was come dinnertime. I thought I’d game the system and save money by choosing a B.Y.O.B. restaurant (from the lists at NYMag.com and nycorked.wikispaces.com), and yet Ivo & Lulu, a cute, seemingly inexpensive French-Caribbean bistro on the western fringe of SoHo, left me disappointed. Sure, the jerk-spiced duck confit was nice, and the bottle of Colombelle white — a favorite of budget-minded art galleries, according to the Chelsea Wine Vault shop — was only $7.58, but somehow dinner came to $53 with the tip. (I later realized we should’ve hit our old standby, Great Jones Cafe, for hearty jambalaya, a fantastic jukebox and lower prices.)

Feeling the pinch, Jean and I decided to revisit our own days of youthful frugality and walked to the Lower East Side, where we had had our first date. Back in 1998, the neighborhood was emerging from its dark days as a center of drugs and crime, and as I showed Jean the landmarks I remembered from those early days — Max Fish, Shakespeare in the Parking Lot, and especially Katz’s, the legendary delicatessen — we’d felt a frisson of discovery. At Katz’s, for instance, I had quickly learned the value of pretipping the counterman (an extra buck got you extra meat) and of filling up on free pickles.

Today, the Lower East Side is a magnet for young people with pop tastes and a lot of money (or a lot of credit-card debt). Velvet ropes abound, and the mobs of partiers transform the tenement-lined streets into a hipster version of crowded Times Square. Below Delancey Street, the scene was cooler and calmer (Fontana’s, for instance, was having a wicked, no-cover soul-music party), but Jean and I felt like outsiders — like the Brooklynites we’d become.

As it grew later, Jean, who was six months pregnant, tired and headed home, but I kept walking the streets of my old neighborhood. I’d heard that a new club, the Delancey, was giving away cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon from midnight to 1 a.m., but when I saw the velvet ropes, I knew I wasn’t going in.

I called a friend to join me and after he arrived, we soon found ourselves amid a small pack of revelers, headed to a bar called Boss Tweed’s that was loathsome in its frattiness, but had an appealing special: two pints of Bud for $3. It even had some historical relevance: William M. Tweed, the infamous 19th-century party boss, died in a jail on nearby Ludlow Street.

After a final refueling at Pommes Frites, whose $4.50 cones of French fries have been sustaining New York University students since 1997, I walked back to the Chelsea, slipping into bed around 4 a.m. Who says I’m not young anymore?

On Sunday morning, Jean and I acted our age and took the D and N trains to Sunset Park, Brooklyn’s Chinatown, where the markets, restaurants and tea shops are as good, if not better, than in Manhattan. The scene, though, was strikingly similar: streets crowded with people inspecting live blue crabs, sucking down bubble tea, wrangling cranky toddlers and buying and selling tube socks by the dozen.

Joined by our friends Ted and Amber Phung, we indulged in that classic New York brunch of dim sum at the shiny Pacificana, where the vast spread of dumplings, radish cakes and really, really good chicken feet came to a puny $11.75 a person, tip included.

Finally, we returned home, to South Brooklyn, and I spent the afternoon at the local yacht club — O.K., the Gowanus Yacht Club, which has neither boats nor membership and is named for the Gowanus Canal, one of the nation’s most polluted waterways. It ain’t fancy — just a concrete beer garden where two cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon will set you back $5.

I sat in the shade, ordered a plastic cup of Sweet Action ale ($6, and worth it), and found myself chatting with a guitarist who records music for commercials and a British artist whose ceramic models of burning houses are sold at the New Museum for Contemporary Art in Manhattan. As we talked, I felt something happening. My life changing? Perhaps. But maybe it was just the rumble of the F train, screeching its way through my city, right under my feet.

TOTAL: $539.07, almost exactly my Chinatown rent 10 years ago.

A TREASURE TROVE OF BARGAINS

WHERE TO STAY

Hotel Chelsea, 222 West 23rd Street; 212-243-3700; www.hotelchelsea.com; doubles with shared bath are $99 to $199; those with private bath $199 to $299.

The Chelsea is not the only option for budget-minded visitors. There are bed-and-breakfasts in every borough, many starting around $100 a night, but they fill up fast. LanierBB.com, Bedandbreakfast.com, BBOnline.com and bnbfinder.com have extensive listings.

Short-term apartment rentals are an increasingly common and affordable choice. Craigslist.org is the leader in terms of volume, with apartments of all sizes for as little as $75 a night. But for those worried about handing over cash to a stranger, there’s Roomorama.com, which takes credit cards, offers automated booking and is more organized than Craigslist. Still, as in all New York real estate transactions, buyer beware.

WHAT TO DO

Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street; 212-535-7710; www.metmuseum.org; suggested admission, $20.

Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street; 212-708-9400; www.moma.org; admission $20, but free Fridays from 4 to 8 p.m.

Friends of the Hudson River Park runs free tours May through September. For more details, visit Friends of Hudson River Park Home Page.

WHERE TO EAT & DRINK

Burger Joint, Le Parker Meridien, 119 West 56th Street; 212-245-5000; LE PARKER MERIDIEN New York.

Curry in a Hurry, 119 Lexington Avenue at 28th Street; 212-683-0900.

City Bakery, 3 West 18th Street; 212-366-1414; The City Bakery.

Fontana’s, 105 Eldridge Street near Grand Street; 212-334-6740; FONTANA'S NEW YORK CITY.

Gowanus Yacht Club, 323 Smith Street, Carroll Gardens section of Brooklyn; 718-246-1321.

Great Jones Cafe, 54 Great Jones Street at the Bowery; 212-674-9304; Great Jones Cafe | New York City.

Ivo & Lulu, 558 Broome Street at Varick Street; 212-226-4399.

Boss Tweed’s, 115 Essex Street between Rivington and Delancey Streets; 212-475-9997; Boss Tweed's Saloon, an olde style NYC bar in the Lower East Side.

Pommes Frites, 123 Second Avenue near St. Marks Place; 212-674-1234; Pommes Frites Inc./Menu.

Pacificana, 813 55th Street at Eighth Avenue, Brooklyn; 718-871-2880; Pacificana Chinese Restaurant of Brooklyn, New York City serving DIM SUM and Chinese cuisine.