Results tagged “bryantpark”

Stop by Bryant Park this week and you'll notice a nice, classy Sukkah, or ceremonial hut, where Jews celebrate the eight-day harvest holiday of Sukkot. The Chabad Lubavitch of Midtown Manhattan pays $10,000 to set up the structure, but it's open to people of all faiths to eat, sit, pray, or just hang out. That's tempting, but isn't the structure taking away precious park space for religious purposes, and violating the constitutional separation of Church and State? Where are the tea-baggers, y'all?

       

Charlie Palmer—chef, restaurateur, frequent Today Show guest and owner of a dozen restaurants nationwide—isn't afraid of a challenge, but his ambitious new endeavor must take nerves of steel in this economy: After two decades in a townhouse on the Upper East Side, he's relocated his popular restaurant Aureole to a flashy new home in the Bank of America tower at One Bryant Park. Unabashedly elegant, the new Aureole hearkens back to a more ebullient era, when opening a fine dining restaurant with a proven track record wasn't quite so fraught with terror. There's been a ton of money sunk into this baby, evident in the oak-clad columns, brushed zinc bar, walnut table tops, leather chairs, the wine mezzanine, and the five custom-made chandeliers. And the downstairs kitchen is massive.

   

Click through the images above for details on this week's newcomers, which also include Calexico and The Pod Cafe.

It's the end of an era! After 16 years there, Fashion Week is moving from the Bryant Park tents to Lincoln Center, Mayor Bloomberg announced earlier today. The move won't happen until September 2010, giving the current location three more Fashion Weeks (February and September 2009, and February 2010). After that, designers will relocate to the new space, which will give them 25% more room.

Qué horrible! Crain's New York is reporting that many designers may not participate in Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in Bryant Park this February. "Buffeted by the heavy costs associated with a runway show and slowing apparel sales, New York designers are struggling to find the best way to present their fall collections come February. Several big-name clothiers, including Betsey Johnson, have pulled out of plans to show their lines at Bryant Park. Some smaller fashion houses are also considering stepping outside of the coveted tents." Enough already, recession. To paraphrase a Real Housewife of Atlanta, "How are you gonna have a fashion show with no fashions?" Well, so far the clothes are safe, but the designers are going back to their thrifty roots; instead of spending hundreds of thousands on a big production, they'll scale it down for a more DIY showing (one mentions using mannequins over models). Crain's also notes that attendance at Fashion Week will be down since many buyers for department stores don't have the money to travel, or buy!

It a big week for New York's newly open-for-the-season ice skating rinks. Bryant Park's rink, which is seasonally surrounded by holiday shops, now has a giant glass restaurant sitting by its side as well.

British architecture firm Foster + Partners has been selected to renovate the New York Public Library's Fifth Avenue Beaux-Arts building. Norman Foster, who married new with old at the British Museum in London and the Hearst Tower in NYC, told the NY Times, "It's the greatest project ever."

Fashion Week usually doesn't bring out many hecklers, but Monday afternoon one gentleman turned the back entrance of the Bryant Park tents into his own personal comedy runway. His style is sort of Will Ferrell-worship meets "Andy" from The Office, but at least he brought some humor to what can sometimes be a rigid crowd. [via NYC the Blog]

         

If you haven't noticed yet, Fashion Week kicked off in New York on Friday. Yesterday the Humane Society teamed up with Charlotte Ronson for the fur-free designer's first Bryant Park showing. Before the first look came down the runway, however, her sister Samantha stole the show with her favorite accessory by her side: Lindsay Lohan. The paparazzi, crazed interns and everyone with a camera swarmed and nearly turned the duo into runway roadkill.

Did you hear a bone-chilling collective shriek coming from the Bryant Park this morning? It was just Miley Cyrus and her legion of tweeny-bopper fans piled into Bryant Park for an early morning concert courtesy of Good Morning America. To put some perspective on it, this was pretty much equivalent to the Bon Jovi concert in Central Park but for the underage set.

June 30th, Hud

Bryant Park is Manhattan’s most packed park, and there’s considerable hand-wringing going on about the new office buildings rising nearby, which will further glut the urban oasis with more than 10,000 new office workers.

World renowned merry-go-round designer Marvin Sylvor has saddled up for the great carousel in the sky following a kidney failure. He was 75. The Bronx-born Sylvor’s love for the fanciful rides dated back to his childhood, when his father, hell-bent to get to Rockaway beach, would always refuse to stop so the young Sylvor could ride a carousel near the Marine Park Bridge.

Even though there wasn't a "villain" along the lines of Santino Rice or a favorite like Michael Knight, the fourth season of Project Runway has been pretty captivating with some very lovely work. Tonight, the three remaining designers' Bryant Park Fashion Week face-off will be shown and a winner announced.

Before the first model walked down the runway, Naomi Campbell spoke out about the lack of minorities at this year's Fashion Week. The Daily News follows up on her initial accusation as the tents emptied out this weekend, saying that "a campaign to promote diversity on the runways during New York's Fashion Week appears to have failed miserably."

Rev up your Manolos (or, whatever), Fashion Week starts tomorrow! A little history: "Fashion Week originally began as 'Press Week' when a well-known fashion publicist named Eleanor Lambert organized the event in 1943. During the 1970s and '80s, designers began to show their collections in lofts, restaurants and clubs across New York City. It wasn't until Fern Mallis, vice president of IMG, the company that produces Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, searched for a venue where all of the shows could be held in a single location. In Spring 1994, Fashion Week as we know it was held in the tents at Bryant Park."

Dan Biederman, the president of the 34th St. Partnership and the Bryant Park Corporation is unambiguous in his dislike of the single boxes. "If you were to look around at everything that’s ugly here that you’d be embarrassed to show to a visitor from Maine or Nebraska or Paris, it’s the news boxes.”

SKATE: Free skating at Bryant Park just got...more free! Now you can get free rental skates every Wednesday provided you are one of the first 100 people to get over to The Pond Exhibit Area.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an injured firefighter at Ave Y and Knapp St. in Brooklyn, serious trauma at the Bryant Park ice rink in Manhattan, and a stabbing at 169th St. and Linden Blvd. in Queens.
• The New Yorker collects quotes from striking writers and their supporters regarding the strike beard phenomena. Conan O'Brien, on perhaps the only physical feature that will ever help him resemble a lumberjack: "I’m the only guy chopping wood outside his Manhattan co-op.”
• Former Yankee Jim Leyritz was arrested on suspicion of DUI and DUI manslaughter after a crash in Florida last night (Leyritz's 44th birthday), which killed the driver of the car he struck.

By 2011, our New York Public Library will have a new face. The building, which looms over Bryant Park and 5th Avenue, has been subject to urban pollution and a whole lot more in the past 96 years. From the press release:

The Library announced that it is undertaking a three-year restoration of the facade of the historic building now formally known as the Humanities and Social Sciences Library. The project will include a complete cleaning of the building's Vermont marble, repair of almost 3,000 cracks, protection and preservation of the many sculptural elements, and repair of the building's roof, stairs, and plazas.

There's something to be said for pausing in the fast-paced environment of New York to truly capture the essence of our city. On the other hand, speeding things up can really give one some perspective on the dynamics of New York. Below is a time-lapse video taken between September 1, 2006 and August 31, 2007. It's of Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan looking east to west, and the video features 4,385 individual photographs taken from a stationary elevated position once every two hours for 365 days.

Did your commute feel more like Springfield than New York today? If you're out and about than you'll likely run into the Simpson-izing of Manhattan! Too bad we don't have a monorail here.

(fishbowl, vol. 3, by hbomb1947 at flickr)

It's been snowing out lately, and thanks to The World's Largest Snow Globe, it's going to be snowing indoors soon as well. Standing at over twenty feet tall, the monstrosity of holiday cheer will be arriving at The Pond at Bryant Park next week (December 14th to 18th). Throughout the week, the snow globe will feature live models in cheery winter scenes, not unlike an Old Navy ad. Why? Good question. In typical holiday fashion,...

Okay, so we've heard about how Rudy Giuliani's mayoral administration billed his police security detail expenses - accrued during trips to the Hamptons, possibly visiting then-mistress Judi Nathan - to various obscure city agencies. And then there are reports that Nathan, now married to the former mayor, used her NYPD security detail to chauffeur friends and family. Naturally, now there's talk of the police security expenses of Giuliani's then-wife Donna Hanover. The Post's David Seifman...

A look at some noteworthy television this week: Lincoln Center Tree Lighting 2007 (Monday, 5:30 p.m, WABC 7) Good Morning America’s Sam Champion and WABC’s Sade Baderinwa host the first televised tree lighting of the season. There will be some performances by Lincoln Center’s resident companies and some guest’s from channel 7’s owner Disney on hand for entertainment for the 8th annual Lincoln Center Holiday Tree lighting. America at a Crossroads (Monday, 9:00 p.m &...

Have you seen Sex and the City filming around town? Seems like some people are watching the cast of the 'ol show film the new movie every step of the way. The Times chronicled the madness and, OMG, talked to Carrie Bradshaw herself (who was hiding away in the basement of the Bryant Park Hotel). She had this to say of her on-the-job craziness: “I basically just look down between every take because it’s...

THEATER: Eugene O’Neill’s early one-act plays get a rare blast of daylight in The Pioneer, a new production that stages four of his nascent gems plus a whimsical monologue O’Neill wrote from the point of view of his dog. The plays boast O’Neill’s signature assortment of furious, flailing characters that would come to dominate his full-length work. Writing for the Times, Rachel Saltz notes that the plays range from “interesting” to “wonderful” and concludes that...

Waiting for the 1, by jschumacher on Flickr