Activities in New York City

From the bright lights of Broadway to the revered stages at the Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, from the high kicks of the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall to the cutting-edge works performed at BAM, New York City continues to be one of the most diverse and heavily textured urban cultural centers in the world. As author Tom Wolfe wrote: ‘Culture just seems to be in the air, like part of the weather.’

The principal entertainment districts are the Theater District in the Broadway/42nd Street/Times Square area and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on the Upper West Side. Most Broadway theaters are located in the blocks just east or west of Broadway, between 41st Street and 53rd Street. Off- and Off-Off-Broadway theaters are sprinkled throughout Manhattan, with a concentration in the East and West Villages, Chelsea and several in the 40s and 50s west of the Broadway theater district. The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, 70 Lincoln Center Plaza, Columbus Avenue at 64th Street , is America’s first and largest performing arts complex, containing many venues. It is also the home of the Metropolitan Opera , the New York City Opera , the New York City Ballet, and the New York Philharmonic, among others.

New York continues to grow and, as well as these established attractions, offers something new each day. Times Square is one of the prominent areas to receive attention. Madame Tussaud’s wax museum, 234 West 42nd Street , which includes a movie complex, the New Amsterdam Theater, 214 West 42nd Street, owned by Disney, as well as a number of similar renovations of historic theaters - such as the New Victory Theater, 209 West 42nd Street and the Academy/Apollo ( - have ensured that New York remains the cultural capital of the USA.

Tickets are available for purchase through Telecharge , which handles Broadway, Off-Broadway and some concerts. Ticketmaster , also offers Broadway and Off-Broadway, as well as tickets to Madison Square Garden and Radio City. Reduced-priced tickets of up to half-price plus a US$3 surcharge for same-day Broadway and Off-Broadway are available for purchase at the TKTS booth, 47th Street and Broadway (open hours: Mon-Sat 1500-2000, also Wed and Sat 1000-1400, Sun 1100-1930) and at the TKTS booth at South Street Seaport , open daily 1500-2000 for evening performances, 1000-1400 for Wednesday and Saturday matinees and 1200-1830 for all Sunday performances. Cash or travelers checks only.

Information on cultural events in the city is available online . Time Out New York also is a good source of information published weekly and sold at newsagents and kiosks for US$2.99.

Music: The Avery Fisher Hall, in the Lincoln Center, 70 Lincoln Center Plaza, Columbus Avenue at 64th Street , is the permanent home of the New York Philharmonic and a temporary one to visiting orchestras and soloists. Tickets for the New York Philharmonic cost approximately US$15-50. The new Time Warner Building is the home of Jazz at Lincoln Center, 33 West 60th Street, 11th Floor . Though its 1,100-seat Fredrick P. Rose Hall, 600-seat performance atrium, and 140 seat jazz cafe has been designed specifically as a jazz venue, it can also accommodate other art forms.

Avery Fisher also hosts the very popular annual Mostly Mozart festival in August. The Alice Tully Hall, also in the Lincoln Center , is a smaller venue for chamber orchestras, string quartets and instrumentalists. The greatest names from all schools of music, from Tchaikovsky and Toscanini to Gershwin and Billie Holiday, have performed at Carnegie Hall, 154 West 57th Street, at Seventh Avenue , which boasts an astonishing and eclectic repertoire at moderate prices. Other leading venues that draw the world’s top performers include Kaufman Concert Hall, 129 East 67th Street , and Lehman Center for the Performing Arts, 250 Bedford Park Boulevard West, Bronx.

Known as the Met, the Metropolitan Opera House, in the Lincoln Center, is New York’s premiere opera venue and home to the Metropolitan Opera (website: www.metopera.org), from September to late April. The New York State Theater, also in Lincoln Center , is where the New York City Opera ( perform. Its wide and adventurous program varies wildly in quality (sometimes startlingly innovative, occasionally mediocre) but seats go for less than half the Met’s prices. Other venues include the Julliard School, 155 West 65th Street, at Broadway , where talented students perform with a famous conductor, usually for low prices.

Theater: Theater venues in the city are referred to as Broadway, Off-Broadway or Off-Off-Broadway - groupings that represent a descending order of ticket price, production polish, elegance and comfort and an ascending order of innovation, experimentation, and theater for the sake of art rather than cash. Off-Broadway is still the place for theater punters to see the works of the world’s most innovative playwrights - social and political drama, satire, ethnic plays and repertory … in short, anything that Broadway would not consider a guaranteed money spinner. Lower operating costs also mean that Off-Broadway often serves as a forum to try out what sometimes ends up as a big Broadway production. Off-Off-Broadway is New York’s fringe. Unlike Off-Broadway, Off-Off doesn’t have to use professional actors and shows range from shoestring productions of the classics to outrageous and experimental performance art.

The National Actors Theater, at Pace University at Spruce Street , presents the classics on Broadway, while Manhattan Theater Club performs at the Biltmore Theater, 261 West 47th Street, and Stages I and II at City Center, 131 West 55th Street , produces some of the finest new plays in American theater. Other theater groups include Walt Disney Theatrical Productions, 1450 Broadway, Suite 300 , which brings the magic of Disney to life on the Broadway stage. For a more ethnic flavor, Harlem’s Apollo Theater, 253 West 125th Street , has celebrated the legacy and culture of African-American music and entertainment since 1934.

Dance: New York has five major ballet companies as well as dozens of contemporary troupes and the official dance season runs from September to January and April to June. Metropolitan Opera House, in the Lincoln Center , is the home of the renowned American Ballet Theater , which performs the classics from early May into July. New York State Theater, also in the Lincoln Center , is home to the revered New York City Ballet , which performs more contemporary ballet for a nine-week season each spring.

Universally known as BAM, Brooklyn Academy of Music, 30 Lafayette Street, between Flatbush Avenue and Fulton Street, Brooklyn , is America’s oldest performing arts academy and one of the busiest and most daring producers in New York. During autumn, BAM’s Next Wave Festival showcases the hottest international attractions in avant-garde dance and music. Winter brings visiting artists, while, each spring, BAM hosts the annual DanceAfrica Festival, America’s largest showcase for African and African-American dance and culture.

The most eminent and celebrated troupes in modern dance perform at City Center, 131 West 55th Street, between Sixth Avenue and Seventh Avenue . Big-name companies include Merce Cunningham Dance Company , Paul Taylor Dance Company (website: www.ptdc.org), Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (website: www.alvinailey.org), Joffrey Ballet and Dance Theater of Harlem . Merce Cunningham Studio, 55 Bethune St at Washington St , the home of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, stages performances by emerging modern choreographers.

Film: A movie center second only to Tinseltown itself, New York has hundreds of modern cinema complexes and arthouse cinemas. Cinemas worth visiting include Loews Lincoln Square, Broadway at 68th Street , which is more a theme park than a multiplex, and The Ziegfeld, 141 West 54th Street, between Sixth Avenue and Seventh Avenue , which often holds glitzy premieres and is the grandest picture palace in town - once home to the Ziegfeld Follies. Arthouse movies are screened at Angelika Film Center, 18 West Houston Street , Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, 1886 Broadway, and Quad Cinema, 34 West Street, between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue. General information, show times and advanced tickets are available from Moviefone .

New York has been portrayed through celluloid in a number of ways, ranging from the ridiculous yet enduring images of King Kong, swinging from the Empire State Building, in the 1933 classic starring Fay Wray, to the psychological horrors of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976). In the latter, Robert De Niro plays the part of a mentally isolated New York cabbie and Vietnam vet, driven to violence by the decadence of the city. It is New York decadence of a slightly different nature that Alan Rudolph explores in Mrs Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994), which looks at New York literary life and society during the 1920s. More recently, films shot in NYC have included One Fine Day (1996), The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), Everyone Says I Love You (1996), The Devil’s Advocate (1997), Gangs of New York (2002), Spiderman 1 and 2 (2002 and 2004 respectively) and The Day After Tomorrow (2004).

Cultural Events: New York’s biggest antiques event, Manhattan Antiques and Collectibles Triple Pier Expo, is held at three piers on the Hudson River, in February. The annual harbinger of spring, the New York Flower Show, is held on piers 90 and 93, 51st Street and 12th Avenue, in March. Meanwhile, Art Expo New York, the world’s largest show of popular art, features a wide range of works from paintings and sculpture to posters and decorative arts, at the Javits Convention Center, also in March. Ninth Avenue International Food Festival is a gastronomic feast of a street fair in May, with live bands and hundreds of food stalls selling a wide assortment of ethnic and junk food. Summerstage, a festival of free or low-cost concerts in Central Park, features world music, pop, folk and jazz artists throughout the summer.

Literary Notes: The vibrant city of New York has spawned some of America’s most celebrated writers and provided the backdrop and inspiration for countless best-selling novels and hit movies. Washington Square, at Fifth Avenue and Waverley Place, was home to the 19th-century aristocracy and provided the inspiration for the classic study of the American upper classes, Washington Square (1881), by New Yorker Henry James. Bohemian Greenwich Village has long been the favored haunt of America’s literati. The Chelsea Hotel, on West 23rd Street, is something of a writers’ emporium. Here Arthur Miller penned After the Fall (1964) and William Burroughs worked on Naked Lunch (1959). New Yorker Arthur Miller is celebrated as America’s greatest living playwright, whose numerous works have delighted Broadway and international audiences for decades. His knowledge of the Brooklyn waterfront helped to form his characters in his play A View From the Bridge (1955) and powerful reflections upon his home town are revealed in The Price (1968).

New York’s most famous contemporary novelist is Paul Auster, who won international acclaim for The New York Trilogy (1987), a book comprising three novellas (City of Glass, Ghosts and The Locked Room) all set in New York. Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace’s Gotham (2001) is one of the most illuminating and readable histories of New York. One of the most striking works from the flurry of post-11 September 2001 publications is September 11: A Testimony (2001), assembled by press agency Reuters, with some of the most dramatic World Trade Center photographic images.

Sport:

Boasting some of the USA’s top sports teams, acres of parkland and beaches and state-of-the-art sports complexes, New York is a sports hotbed, offering the very best in spectator sports and a comprehensive array of activities for lovers of the great outdoors. The city’s best indoor participant sports venue is the ultra-modern Chelsea Piers Sports and Entertainment Complex, a 12-hectare (30-acre) facility situated on four beautifully restored early 20th-century piers at 23rd Street at West Side Highway, on the Hudson River. The complex has everything from a rock-climbing wall to an inline skating rink.

Visitors interested in tickets to the top sporting events in the city should book in advance, as seasonal sell-outs are not uncommon. Ticketmaster is the best and most recognized way for one to purchase a ticket to a New York sporting event.

With two Major League teams, the baseball season, which runs from April to October, attracts huge crowds to two major stadiums in the area. Shea Stadium, 123-01 Roosevelt Avenue, Flushing, Queens , is home to the New York Mets . The New York Yankees, the most successful baseball team in US history, can be found at Yankee Stadium, East 161st Street and River Avenue, in the Bronx .

The local basketball season runs from October to April. Madison Square Garden, Seventh Avenue, between 31st Street and 33rd Street, Manhattan, is the home of the celebrated New York Knickerbockers, or Knicks, as well as New York Liberty , the popular women’s team.

American football teams from New York include the Giants and New York Jets. The American football season kicks off in September. These two leading teams now play in New Jersey, at the Giants Stadium, in the Meadowlands Sports Complex Tickets sell out well in advance and there are long waiting lists.

Ice hockey is also hugely popular and the National Hockey League (NHL) teams include the local New York Rangers. The team plays at Madison Square Garden (see above). Other local teams include New York Islanders , whose home ground is the Nassau Coliseum, 1255 Hempstead Turnpike, Uniondale , and New Jersey Devils , who play at the Meadowlands Sports Complex .

The Arthur Ashe Stadium, Flushing Meadows, Queens, hosts the US Open Tennis Championships , which takes place in late August to early September, featuring some of the world’s top seeded players.

Beaches: There are several beaches in New York City, such as Coney Island, Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach. The best beaches for tanning and swimming, however, are located on Long Island .

Bowling: Bowlmor Lanes, 110 University Place, between 12th Street and 13th Street , is Manhattan’s premier bowling center with 42 lanes and an atmosphere of 1950s kitsch. The venue, which serves pricey cocktails, becomes a veritable nightclub on some evenings, when it is open until the wee hours, with a DJ and glow-in-dark bowling on offer.

Fitness Centers: The Sports Center at Chelsea Piers, Pier 60, 23rd Street, is a 14,000 sq meter (150,000 sq foot) adult sports and fitness club. Facilities include an indoor track and swimming pool, sundecks, basketball courts, an indoor sand volleyball court, boxing ring, rock climbing wall and gym. Day membership passes cost US$50 and allows access to all facilities.

Golf: The Black Course at Bethpage State Park, 99 Quaker Meeting House Road, Farmingdale , was the first public golf course to host the US Open. It is located just east of the city, on Long Island. Play costs approximately US$62 plus a US$3 reservation fee, depending upon the course chosen. Clearview Golf Club, 202-12 Willets Point Boulevard , is open to the public for US$33 for 18 holes (weekdays after 1300) and US$43 (weekends after 1300). The Golf Club at Chelsea Piers, Pier 59, 23rd Street , is America’s most high-tech super range. There is a 200-yard fairway, all-weather driving range, putting green and a full-service Golf Academy. A session on the driving range starts at US$20 and prices rise with the number of balls used in session. American Golf allows online booking of tee times.

Horseracing: New Yorkers love the races and the main racetracks include Aqueduct Racetrack, Ozone Park, Queens , and Meadowlands Racetrack, East Rutherford

Running: New York Road Runners Club, 9 East 89th Street, between Madison Avenue and Fifth Avenue , are the organizers of the NYC Marathon and promote the sport through races, events and publications.

Sailing: Surfside Marina at Chelsea Piers, Pier 62 , is the city’s largest marina, featuring a sailing school as well as boats for dinner cruising and deep-sea fishing.

Skating/Ice Skating: The Roller Rinks at Chelsea Piers, Pier 62, 23rd Street , has two indoor ice skating rinks, two outdoor in-line/roller skating rinks and a skate park. There are two outdoor ice skating rinks with skate hire in Central Park, 59th Street to 110th Street, and one in the Rockefeller Center, Fifth Avenue, 47th Street to 52nd Street .

Tennis: The tennis courts at Central Park, located at 93rd Street , are open to the public during the summer. Riverside Park, just off the Hudson River, has 10 clay courts located at 96th Street and 10 hard courts on 119th Street .