OT: Advice from those familiar with New York requested....

...probably QPRNY and QPR New York.

I'm flying in for work on Tuesday, into JFK. What do you recommend for getting downtown (working on East 42nd Street, staying on East 39th Street) from the airport - cab, train/subway or bus? Just noticed that there is a bus to Grand Central Station which is pretty close to where I need to get and I'll have minimal baggage. Arriving at JFK about 1.00 in the afternoon. Always done this trip from Newark in the past, for some reason. Cost not an issue and I have plenty of time on Tuesday, don't need to meet colleagues until the evening.

If anyone works/lives near there and fancies a beer on Wednesday evening, give me a shout. Loud OBZ choruses in Manhattan should be done.

 

I did it once in a cab and we hit traffic and it cost something like $100. That was back in 1986 so I think it could be much more now if you were to hit traffic.

 

As 999s said Cab is best and about $50. Bus is slow but ok and I've never taken the Subway from JFK. Happy to meet for a beer.

 

$100, ha ha , you were ripped off.

 

or when you land call 212 777 7777 and a car will pick you up. They will tell you on the phone how much.

 

Surely a cabbie wouldn't rip me off? I was on business at the time so the job paid.

 

My advice would be to swap back to Newark! In my experience it was a much more civilised experience flying into Newark than the madhouse that is JFK.

 

Thats your phone number isn't it NY?

 

This is NY not London, of course they would rip you off if they could.

 

I flew into Newark NJ in Oct 2002 for a short vacation with my wife as break from our 5 kids. I recall on the cab ride to Manhattan imagining scenes from the Sopranos intro. We were extremely lucky to have Upper East Side accommodations available to us (neat the Jeffersons High Rise Building) with friends of my wife who worked at the Canadian embassy.

We toured the expansive Central Park, visited museums & art galleries and of course the 911 site, enjoyed the harbour cruise, although the Statue of Liberty was still closed amid very tight security. We took the bus to Harlem - en route passing an enormous cathedral (Saint John the Divine?), saw the famous Apollo Theatre - I seemed to be the only white guy walking the streets while my wife shopped for 2 hours - I encountered a guy selling postcards of lynching victims. We also caught the Broadway show Mama Mia and drank Rolling Rock beer in pubs in the neighbourhood of our hosts. On the return trip to Newark I discovered I was not very good at hailing a cab and the doorman obliged with immediate response. My other recollection was the skyline with the all the rooftop metal water reservoirs that resemble space ships ready for launch.

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Cathedral of Saint John the Divine

The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine is one of the largest Christian churches in the world, and an iconic feature of Manhattan in New York. By all means it should be considered a landmark, but officials in charge of that sort of thing are waiting until the building—which was started in 1892—is actually finished.Construction on this thing has pretty much been a mess from the start—it’s been plagued by everything from financial woes to engineering problems to wars and fires, not to mention the fact that the designers switched up its whole architectural style a couple times (just for the hell of it, presumably). Church officials are still trying to figure out exactly how to finish this thing, but in the meantime it enjoys the affectionate nickname ‘Saint John the Unfinished.’

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/10/n...ows-fix-what-he-s-got-not.html?pagewanted=all

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On Our Radar:
The Jeffersons High-rise
Posted by: Sarah Liston
Friday, August 25, 2006
After years of dragging myself up four freakin’ flights of breakneck stairways to get to my apartment, I finally moved to a building that had an elevator (We’re movin’ on up! Movin’ on up!). “Golly gee willikers, this sure is fain-cy!” I exclaimed to the other passengers in the elevator who pretended not to hear me. But the elevator was only the beginning—there was also a VIEW (of something other than a brick wall)! And that fugly building across the way with the bizarre bricked-in center windows and saucer-like balconies that no one ever steps foot on, looked awfully familiar. In fact, I remember it from my TV rerun-filled childhood in Texas. Yep, that’s right! It’s the high-rise that The Jeffersons “moved on up” to on TV—that dee-luxe apartment in the sky-hi-hi! Check it out for yourself at 85th and Third Avenue. Stand in the circular driveway and gaze straight up like George and Weezy did during the opening credits. And remember…fish don’t fry in the kitchen and beans don’t burn on the grill!

http://www.notfortourists.com/LD.aspx/New-York/Landmarks/The-Jeffersons-High-rise

 

Kilburn, the vast majority of the rooftoop water tanks are wood.

Getting Water to New Yorkers Is a Family Business
By ELIZABETH A. HARRIS

New York is many things: dynamic and dense, artistic and competitive, vivacious and sometimes, particularly in summer, a bit smelly. The list of traits goes on and on, but the word “quaint” isn’t on it. And yet one of the city’s most familiar signposts is a charming, rustic throwback: the wooden water tank.

For over a century, the basic design of these tanks, which are essentially giant wooden barrels, has gone largely unchanged. So as each one ages out of its working life, it is replaced by another member of the same family, and the tradition marches on.

As it happens, the same can be said about the people who put them in place.

Installing, maintaining and replacing wooden water tanks in the city is largely handled by three companies: Isseks Brothers, the Rosenwach Group and American Pipe and Tank. Each is an old family business that has operated for at least three generations, and each has a next generation who parents and grandparents are hoping will take over.

“It’s kind of in our blood, I would say,” said Henry Rosenwach, 23, who spent summers in high school and college scrambling around on rooftops with tank crews, always with strict instructions to keep both of his teenage feet on the ground. But the final decision to join up, he said, arrived at a practical moment. “I think it was at the point when it was time for me to get a job,” he said.

Though they look old-fashioned, wooden tanks are still very much in use, even in the city’s new luxury buildings, like the stratospherically expensive condominiums at 15 Central Park West, said David Hochhauser, who owns Isseks along with his brother and sister. Pressure in the city’s pipes will take water up only about half a dozen stories, so a building taller than just a few floors requires either a pumping system or a system of tanks, which shifts some of the burden to the force of gravity for a sprinkler system or, say, tap water.

The changes in water-tank construction over the past 100 years, Mr. Hochhauser said, have amounted to little more than the introduction of power tools, and perhaps the movement to sell the cedar from the discarded old tanks (they last about 30 years) to hip furniture makers specializing in reclaimed wood.

Water tanks for buildings can also be made of steel, but they are less recognizable because they are mostly enclosed — imagine how hot a steel vat would get on a rooftop in August, or how quickly it might freeze on a January night.

“Wood does very well outside,” said Steven Silver, a president, and a third-generation Silver, at American Pipe and Tank, which entered the wooden tank market about 30 years ago. “That is where it’s designed to be.”

And incidentally, the wooden tank seems to offer a bit more romance than its metal cousin.

“You can’t imagine how many people are just so interested,” Scott Hochhauser, David’s brother, said of the emblematic towers.

“Some are interested in the history; a lot of artists like them for the beauty; and there are people who are into the mechanics of them,” he added. “But I don’t get too many people call up to say, ‘Hey, tell me about those steel tanks.’ ”

After graduating from Vanderbilt University, Mr. Rosenwach started training to join the family business in earnest. He spent a year tailing his father, Andrew, and is now working a two-year stint with a commercial real estate company, the kind of business that buys his family’s products, which also include cooling towers and furniture.

But of course, the subtle indoctrination into the family ways begins much earlier than formal training.

Scott Hochhauser said his two daughters, now in college and in high school, used to join him frequently in the office and on rooftops when they were younger. Mr. Silver of American Pipe and Tank recalls popping his elder son, Jason, into a stroller and zipping him over to job sites. His wife, Helen Silver, director of client relations at the company, laughs when she describes a picture of their younger son, Matthew, as a 3-year-old, standing in the center of a tank and brandishing a hammer.

When the brothers were asked if they planned to follow the family tradition, Matthew piped up.

“I think I might,” he said slowly. “But ——”

His mother quickly interrupted. “College comes first,” she said.

Among the three Hochhausers who run Isseks, there are five children, and while none have officially taken the baton, Scott and David Hochhauser say they are confident they will find a taker.

“As a college kid, water tanks aren’t sexy,” David Hochhauser said, at the company’s offices on Broome Street. Stacks of lumber are piled on the ground floor, and the high school portraits of each of the three owners, with gloriously feathered hair and adorned in 1970s polyester, hang on the second story.

“But as you get a little bit older, and you’ve worked for other people,” Mr. Hochhauser continued, “the concept of a small family-owned business, and the flexibility to maybe go to the doctor or the dentist at some point, that becomes a little more appealing.”

Besides, as the young Jason Silver said of the family tanks, they are “a landmark of Manhattan.”

 

Thanks lads, so the advice is cab (taken) and not to fly to JFK (thanks for that Roller.......very helpful at this stage)

It's a work trip, I don't think I'll have time for a water tank (wooden) tour, but thats very interesting.

NY keep an eye on your PMs re Wednesday evening. Not sure if my business partners will insist on entertaining me then as well. We may not be partners by that stage anyway.....

 

It reminds me of my one and only trip back in 1998 - on business.

I was a bit naive - only 24 at the time - and it was the mardi gras celebrations - so I headed into Manhattan to grab breakfast at a diner and soak up the atmosphere as things were being set up for the carnival later in the day.

I wandered past a vagrant at the time and didn't think much of it as he muttered away; next thing I know, everyone in the deli is ducking down in the booths and this fellow is spraying bullets everywhere!

Welcome to New York!

I have to admit it started me a bit!

I hid down and watched on as the police cornered him until one brave cop tackled him. The front pages on the evening paper suggested he had 'over 200 rounds of ammunition in his pants pockets'.

It was a very brief visit and I had four hours before I needed to get back to JFK and I had a big decision to make - do I find a downtown bar and watch Argentina vs England in huge quarter finals of the World Cup 1998 - or do some sightseeing.

Guess what I did?

 

I live close to New York and fly every month in and out of JFK.

This is the company I use

http://www.carmellimo.com/ +1 212 666 6666

$40 dollars with the printable coupon to your address.

You can book in advance or just call the number when you have your bags.

 

Yellow Taxi Flat Fare from John F. Kennedy (JFK) Airport:
For trips between (to and from) Manhattan and JFK International Airport, the flat fare is $52.00 plus any tolls using Rate Code 2 on the meter. A NY State Tax Surcharge of $.50 will be added to each trip.

 

That looks very handy, do you pay a tip with that? Been told $60 for a cab including tolls and tip.

 

Just scan the Manhattan skyline and you'll catch plenty of them and imagine the Sopranos intro on your cab ride in from Newark NJ.

Perhaps you'll sample one of these? Reviews not great, but back in 2002 it seemed the beer of choice for NYC locals.

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http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/174/567/

 

Been in NY for over 30 yearsand never heared of RR being the beer of choice except for students who wanted a cheap beer for partys.
It always seems the grass is always greener, it always made me laugh that when I went to pubs in London everyone seem to be drinking Buds, which is laughed at here. Again its a cheapish beer with no taste. At the moment for Lagers Dos Equis seems to be the one with Samuel Adams being the one to drink if you want a darker beer. Most bottled beers are available here, depending where you are, good beers on tap are hard to find but can be found in certain places.

Looking at the picture "Extra Pale" sort of gives it away!

 

That beer used to be great before Anhueser-Busch took them over and moved their facility from western Pennsylvanis to Newark.