Tag: Rockefeller Center

Ice skating in NYC

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Winter in New York City has its challenges – while not incessantly freezing cold or snowy like some other cities (hey, I lived in Chicago), it certainly can be. The wind amplifies as it whips around our skyscrapers, making wind chill a real trial some days. The days are shorter, and once the festive lights of the holiday season are over, a gloomy grey day can make you feel that you are enduring rather than exuberantly enjoying walking around the city bundled in your warmest parka, hat, and gloves (I recommend mittens!). However, when my sister lived in Vermont, she told me that there you just have to figure out a way to make your peace with winter, and people would take up cross-country skiing or other outdoor sports to get out and find a way to enjoy the season. I think that is true of NYC as well, and one thing that is fun to do – and with few exceptions, only available during the winter – is to go ice skating. While the iconic Rockefeller Center rink immediately comes to mind, there are many places to go ice skating in NYC. Let’s look into our options . . .

Rockefeller Center

When the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree is up, it’s impossible to resist skating under it – at least once (the rink has capacity limitations, is small, and when the tree is up everyone has the same idea!). But keep in mind that the rink is open much longer than the tree is up (it opened October 21st in 2023 for this season, and will stay open until late March or early April, depending on weather). Cost for an adult to skate ranges from $21-79 (pricing is flexible and based on demand) without skate rental and for only 40-60 minutes (your time could be shorter than an hour if the Zamboni is used during your hour), so it’s not inexpensive. If you wanted to skate a lot, there is a season pass, starting at $250. It’s hard to beat this skating rink for photo opportunities (see a video I took here), but it’s not most locals’ first choice. You can find out more about the Rockefeller Center skating rink here.

Bryant Park

Not too far from Rockefeller Center, behind the iconic main branch of the New York Public Library, you can find the Bryant Park Winter Village. Skating here is FREE (this is not a misprint!), and you can reserve tickets (the reservations open up a week in advance). If you need to rent skates, they are available – if you have your own skates, there is no charge at all to skate here. See here for a video I took at the rink once when a skating performance surprised me. The Holiday Market here was recently voted the world’s best, and there are other fun things to do (rent a private igloo for dining, eat at the Lodge, have a drink at the L’OR Porch, even go curling!). Perhaps the most fun is BUMPER CARS ON ICE, where you sit in a big tube and basically slide around and bounce into others. Trust me, it is crazy fun. Bumper cars on ice is not free, but I think well worth it. Find out more about skating and other things to do at Bryant Park in the winter here.

Wollman Rink

I will put my own bias out right away – I think ice skating at Wollman Rink, surrounded by Central Park and looking at the skyscrapers ringing the park is the most beautiful and enjoyable skating experience in NYC (see a video I took while walking past on Christmas Eve in 2023 here). Tickets can be reserved in advance (around $15) and they also have skate rentals available. Tip to New Yorkers with a library card: Culture Pass, with which you can get free admission to museums and such, often has a pass for four available during the week at no charge. Wollman Rink is more exposed than many of the other urban skating rinks, so check the weather before you go. Find out more about skating at Wollman Rink here.

The Rink at Brookfield Place

Brookfield Place, near One World Trade and Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan, has a nice rink that I find usually not too crowded. You have distant views of the Statue of Liberty and you are skating right next to the Hudson River. Pricing is reasonable – $15 weekdays and $17 weekends, with skate rentals only $5-7. Find out more about skating at Brookfield Place here.

Manhattan West

Manhattan West is a hidden gem – if you haven’t been to this area in Midtown near Hudson Yards, check it out. They have skating sessions mid-November through March, and the cost is about $20 (plus $5 for skate rental). Find out more about skating at Manhattan West here.

Glide at Brooklyn Bridge Park

There’s a new skating rink in NYC, and I really want to try it but haven’t yet! It’s called Glide, at Brooklyn Bridge Park right under the Brooklyn Bridge (one of my favorite pics from walking over the Brooklyn bridge is above), and is open until March 1. A skating session starts at $15, with skate rental at $5, and from what I can tell the views are incredible. Find out more about skating at Glide here.

Chelsea Piers Sky Rink

I mentioned before that most but not all ice skating rinks in NYC are outdoors, and the Sky Rink at Chelsea Piers is the big exception. Completely indoors, enormous (there are two full-sized rinks), and open year-round, this is where I took my daughters to learn to skate. Find out more about Chelsea Piers skating here.

And more!

I have not personally been to the following rinks but there is ice skating at least part of the year at Industry City in Brooklyn, Prospect Park, and Riverbank State Park.

One thing I was definitely reminded of when I summited Mount Kilimanjaro this summer in freezing cold and wind: there is no bad weather, only weather for which you have not dressed properly. (OK, not entirely true, it was still cold on Kili, and certainly at times my face has become completely numb by the cold and wind here in the city during a frigid snap – but still, proper gear makes all the difference!). So let’s get out and appreciate winter here in NYC . . . for after all, would we appreciate spring and cherry blossoms quite so much if we hadn’t just lived through our austere and challenging winter?

NYC Holiday Decorations 2020

Published on by juliebrannan1 Comment

The year 2020 in New York City has certainly not turned out as we all would have hoped when they were clearing confetti from Times Square on January 1. This holiday season is unlike any other one – no Radio City Christmas Spectacular, or NYCB Nutcracker at Lincoln Center, or Santaland at Macy’s, just to name a few- but despite the pandemic, the city came through again with plenty of gorgeous lights and decorations.

I was so relieved when I heard Rockefeller Center would have a tree again this year. They limited access so that crowds didn’t gather unsafely taking photos under the tree, but it was easy to see it from Fifth Avenue (actually easier than usual, with so few tourists here).

Similarly, it was great to see Saks continuing their tradition of decorating the facade of their building on Fifth Avenue (just across from the Rock Center tree) with a light/sound show every 15 minutes after dark. To see a video sample, check out my Instagram post here.

This display on Sixth Avenue is a favorite of mine. Again, if anything it is easier to appreciate this year with the crowds so light.

Many holiday displays this year managed to work proper modeling of mask wearing into their offerings, including the New York Public Library lions and this nutcracker on Sixth Avenue.

Walking along Fifth, you could mail a letter to Santa, or listen to holiday music played from the Cartier display.

The Winter Village at Bryant Park and holiday market was back this year, just with more space between vendors and lighter crowds. Skating is going on as well, you can see a video of that here. To see this and many other holiday markets a few years ago, click here.

There was no Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade winding through the streets of Manhattan this year, but the Macy’s windows remind us of the importance of gratitude this year – for our health care and essential workers (and for our health if we have been lucky enough to maintain it).

There’s nothing quite as magical as New York City at Christmas, and we needed that delight and joy more than ever this year.

St. Patrick’s Cathedral was as majestic as ever this Christmas season.

Once again, New Yorkers decorated their homes to celebrate this dark time of year – in a very dark year – with light, humor, and bright color. To see a previous blog post about residential holiday decorations, click here.

So the dropping of the Times Square ball will be televised this December 31, but will occur in an empty area gated to prevent people from gathering. Regardless, the rejoicing that will ensue as we welcome in 2021 will not be lessened in any way by celebrating at home. As I wrote on the piece of confetti that will fall as 2021 arrives in NYC, I have tremendous hope for health, love and prosperity in this new year ahead.

NYC Holiday Decorations 2016

Published on by juliebrannan4 Comments

Just as the first chilly gusts of wind arrive to remind us that harsh winter days are ahead, New York City puts on its December finery, showing off with light and color to distract us from the season of dark and cold ahead. While the traditional pleasures of the department store windows, Rockefeller Center decorations, and Radio City or NYCB Nutcracker shows always delight, one of my favorite things about this month is walking down residential streets and seeing the lights we have put up in our own homes – to warm ourselves but also send warmth out to others passing by. The following photos are from the 2016 holiday season (see my post in 2015 here and my post from 2014 in Dyker Heights here):

The Rockefeller tree by day (wonderful) and night (spectacular).

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Skating at Rock Center.

The Radio City Christmas Spectacular finale and living nativity (love those camels!).

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Inside the Art Deco masterpiece, Radio City Music Hall.

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Saks Fifth Avenue, seen from Rock Center.

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Heralding angels leading up to the Rock Center tree.

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Downtown Brooklyn.

A private townhouse in the East 60’s.

It’s hard to capture the lights of the city at night with an iPhone, but I do feel that nighttime is when the city is at its best – and this is particularly true for December, where we push back the darkness as best we can with arrays of light. I absolutely love the poem that Travel and Leisure Magazine commissioned from New York poet Rowan Ricardo Phillips, A Tale of Two Cities:

City above the city and city
Below the city. The diners, theaters,
Dance spots and dives all late-light strobed life
Sumptuous as solitude that knows it’s not
Loneliness like the blue blue-green peacock
Who gales open, waits, doubts and does not doubt.
There is a city above the city
That thinks of you as you think of it: sky,
That you are the sky to it, and these buildings,
Iridescent in thick night like flora
And fauna, are its clouds. We all are part
Of some other distant constellation,
A chanced-on font you see on a marquee
When you look out and then up,
When you think the thought that gets caught in air
And rises from your head like steam in the thaw—
That is the city above the city
Calling out to you through the blued spectrum,
That veiled feeling you keep to yourself of
The time you stood on a street and could swear
Some part, some magnificent part of you
Had just turned into a fish and opened
Up upwards into the darkness, the light,
The darkness, the light, the darkness, the light.

NYC holiday decorations 2015

Published on by juliebrannan4 Comments

One of my favorite things about being a real estate agent in New York City is being able to move around all neighborhoods within the city. For so many people, we spend time around our place of work and around our home – but for me, the entire city is my place of work! NYC is endlessly changing and never boring, but I believe that at no point during the calendar year does it shine as brightly as December. We humans have been so clever, creating repetitive rituals that specifically call for light just as we hit the darkest time of the year. This December we have had unusually warm weather, and no snow, but the holiday decorations have proceeded full force. The following is a selection of some of 2015’s holiday decorations, taken in various neighborhoods in the city.

The grand dame of the city’s holiday scene is certainly the tree at Rockefeller Center. Although they manage to find an impressively large and full tree every year, to my mind the tree itself is not what makes this such an iconic spot – it’s the framing device. Towering 30 Rock behind the tree, Prometheus and skaters beneath it, wind-whipped flags surrounding it, and heralding angels leading the viewer from Fifth Avenue toward the tree – it just doesn’t get better than that. I would advise you go early in the season or very early or late at night to avoid intense crowds that take away the awe and replace it with claustrophobia.

Saks

If in the Rockefeller Center area, the light and music display on the front of Saks Fifth Avenue just across the street is worth waiting a bit for. Every 10 minutes from about 4-11 PM, the building is transformed into “The Winter Palace” using over 225,000 lights and a synchronized soundtrack.

Radio city wreath

If you are fortunate enough to be able to catch the Radio City show, expect to be overwhelmed with Art Deco holiday lusciousness. Even if outside the Music Hall, you can appreciate the elaborate decorations.

I particularly enjoyed the Peanuts-themed decorations outside Macy’s this year.

Macy squirrel

Inside Macy’s, they have created a beautiful but somewhat whimsical lighted forest, including animatronic squirrels.

Barneys is continuing to develop upon its ice theme from last year (live ice skaters performed on ice in the windows in 2014) with ice sculptures being created in real time in one of its windows (starting around noon every day). I found it amusing that, rather than carols, Foreigner’s “Cold as Ice” plays regularly as the artist works his magic in the chilled chamber.

UnionSquareHolidayMarket

The holiday markets that spring up all over the city every year are wonderful – food, crafts, and atmosphere. A particular favorite of mine is in Union Square.

bryant park skating
The Bryant Park holiday market has the advantage of surrounding the tree and ice skating rink (free!), with the additional possibility of heading around the front of the NY Public Library to see the great stone lions Patience and Fortitude, majestic and wreathed.

holiday markets
The holiday market at Columbus Circle puts you right at the Southwest corner of Central Park.

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Across the street from that holiday market at the shops at Columbus Circle, with a beautiful snowflake light and sound show running almost continually.

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The city’s museums share in the holiday spirit, with the American Museum of Natural History presenting topiary dinosaurs with wreaths and tiny white lights. Inside, they have a tree covered in origami art.

Mettree

Somewhat more seriously, the Metropolitan Museum of Art across the park presents the Neopolitan tree inside the Medieval Sculpture Hall with exquisitely carved figures, angels ascending, and seasonal music.

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While on the Upper East Side, be sure to see the Park Avenue mall with its majestic line of trees from the base of the MetLife building all the way up to 96th Street.

santa upper east side

Some of my favorite decorations are those you come across while walking through different neighborhoods. From a simple menorah or tree glimpsed in a window to elaborate townhouse decorations like those pictured above, even familiar blocks can reveal surprises at this time of the year. When I see personal decorations, for one moment I feel a connection with the person who took the time to send some light into this dark time of the year (often dark for some personally or for the world, in addition to the shortening days), my neighbors in this wonderful city.
For previous blog posts about this season, click here and here .

December in New York City

Published on by juliebrannan3 Comments

Time Warner holiday lights

Throughout history, as the days get shorter and the weather cooler in the Northern Hemisphere, people have steeled themselves against the coming winter by holding festivals of light. From the Pagan Yule celebration of the ancient Germanic people, to Saturnalia celebrated by the Romans, and continuing through today’s celebrations of Hanukkah, Christmas, and Diwali, we try to drive away the dark days ahead with revelry and light. I find that New York City is at its most magical during the month of December, and from the influx of tourists during the last two weeks of the month, many others do as well. For those of us who live in the city, the trick is to see the most popular tourist sites earlier in the month or on an off-day or –time, while appreciating the lights and decorations everywhere in the city, especially primarily residential areas seldom packed with visitors.

One attraction definitely in the category of those you want to try to see early in the season, and not on a weekend, is the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. Lit this year on December 3rd, and remaining lit until the 31st, these dates bookend perhaps the worst times and places to be during this season, in my opinion – the lighting of the tree attracts tens of thousands of people to a small midtown area, snarling traffic for hours, and of course Times Square on New Year’s Eve is even worse. Seeing the magnificent tree and decorations at Rockefeller Center in the few weeks after the tree lighting is definitely worth it. The tree this year is an 85 foot Norway spruce from Pennsylvania, lit by 45,000 LED lights – the ultimate story of a small town resident hitting the big time in NYC. The presentation of the tree from Fifth Avenue is theatrical perfection; a series of trumpeters framing the tree over the picturesque skating rink and iconic statue of Prometheus.

Saks Fifth Avenue is across from the tree, and has a new “Enchanted Experience” light show this year, which requires 71,000 lights and six 3-D projectors. The show, synched with holiday music, plays several times per hour after dark. Their windows this year celebrate the Art Deco era when Saks was founded, and a display in the store features a tribute to the Rockettes, who can of course be seen in action nearby at Radio City Music Hall (a Deco masterpiece). Saks’ windows this year continue the Art Deco theme, with classic fairy tales told in that style.

A person could spend an entire day viewing all the holiday window displays at department stores around the city, but for the average New Yorker, they are seen in passing while getting from one area to another. Several are worth a stop, though – Barney’s has been “Baz Dazzled” by director Baz Luhrmann (and occasionally has live ice skating in the north window), Bergdorf Goodman has a “Holidays on Ice” theme, Bloomingdale’s shows its brown shopping bags in scenes around the world, and Henri Bendel uses Al Hirschfeld caricatures to create celebrity-focused windows. At Macy’s, after seeing the classic “Yes, Virginia” windows, you can check out the line for Santa Land to see if the wait is not too extreme. Macy’s of course is the setting for the ultimate ironic New York City real estate story, “Miracle on 34th Street,” where a little girl can’t wait to give up her apartment on Central Park West (with a view of the Thanksgiving parade and Central Park) for a house in the suburbs!

One doesn’t have to do all their holiday shopping in these huge department stores, however, since holiday shopping markets pop up all over the city during the month of December. From “Sell by the L” in Bushwick and Artist and Fleas in Williamsburg, to the market in the Bohemian Beer Hall in Astoria and Flea and Food in Long Island City, all boroughs are represented in these unique experiences, featuring locally made and unique products. Some of the best known holiday markets in Manhattan are those in Grand Central Station, Union Square, Columbus Circle, Chelsea Market, and Bryant Park.

If in Bryant Park at night, you have a terrific view of the Empire State Building. I can’t find any information on whether they will do it again this year, but last year leading up to Christmas they had a holiday light show synchronized to music on a local radio station. The skating rink at Bryant Park is my favorite one to actually skate on in the city – in part because it is free (although skate rental is $15) but also because it is generally less crowded than the Rockefeller Center or Central Park rinks.

There are so many opportunities to see something special in December – from the Holiday Train Show at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx to seeing the Neapolitan crèche in the Metropolitan Museum, from the Time Warner Center light and music show (Holidays under the Stars) to the lighting of the world’s largest menorah at Grand Army Plaza at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street (while perhaps not the largest, Prospect Park in Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza also has quite a large menorah). One of the most elegantly impressive signs of the season is along Park Avenue from 54th to 97th Streets, where 104 fir trees covered in white lights line the malls running through the middle of the avenue. Originally started after World War II to commemorate those who lost their lives in the conflict, they now serve as a symbol for peace, and fit in well with the beautiful quiet residential areas north of 72nd Street.

For all the special things to see, however, my favorite part of this season is experiencing the unexpected decorations near where I live, or in a random neighborhood I am walking through. Walking down East End Avenue on a late night alone and coming across the solitary tree lit in Carl Schurtz Park, or seeing the glowing menorah in someone’s window – those are the moments that remind me what a gift it is to live in this city, which shines so brightly in December that it allows me to shore up my own inner light to defend against the dark and cold winter months.