Autumn in New York
Just a few weeks after the equinox, New York has settled into autumn as if it was a comfy blanket. We’ve had several glorious weekends in a row, just right to inaugurate the annual rite known as autumn in New York. The streets swelled on the first chill Saturday of the season as New Yorkers stayed in town en masse for the first weekend since Memorial Day. There was not a seat to be had at tavern, brunch spot or sidewalk café as we met to catch up with ourselves and our city over omelets, cappuccinos and Bloody Marys. New Yorkers wrapped in jackets and snuggled into sweaters lined up at the movies, as our favorite rep house welcomed autumn with its usual slate of programming designed to evoke post-show opinionating at a favorite bistro.
Shops are signaling readiness for the autumn holidays with a fervor that I don’t remember seeing for years. Walking the Flatiron and SoHo that weekend, I saw appropriately scary or homey displays (or both) everywhere from Crate and Barrel and Pier 1 to West Elm and Fish’s Eddy. At Pottery Barn, I was delighted to find a string of lights designed as caged crows. These birds, which represent both intellect and dread, find a welcome perch in the spooky, scholarly atmosphere of our home office.
But if name brand window-shopping is one of the delights of city living, it is the small shops that give our neighborhoods character, just as they do on main streets throughout the country. It is my autumn tradition to spend a chilly Saturday afternoon on my favorite such stretch in the West Village. A handful of old-fashioned Halloween candy from Li-Lac is the perfect companion for a leisurely stroll along dew-slick cobblestones and storefronts glowing amber. I often find The Golden Rule hosting a wine tasting behind the leaded windows of their storefront on Hudson Street. I've written before about McNulty’s, whose caffeinated embrace pours right out of an historic doorway on Christopher Street. A pound of their spiced pumpkin coffee resides in our urban kitchen from Labor Day straight through Thanksgiving, and gifts of French Roast Java Mountain Supreme will be tucked with jars of homemade jam into Christmas parcels when that time comes.
This year, I was delighted to encounter new businesses that suggest signals of faith in the economic future. The tiny Meadow delighted my epicurean heart and palate with a dentist’s nightmare selection of imported chocolate and an apothecary’s dream selection of bitters. I will alternate using Bitter Tears’ sassy Lucille and sexy Lolita bitters to anoint my Manhattans until the holiday season, when I will switch to Black Russians. For that season, both gifts given and hinted for will be found at LEO Design. This is not strictly a new business but one relocated from the recent unfortunate gentrification of Bleecker Street. This shop's selection of pieces from the American Arts and Crafts school is so carefully curated and beautifully displayed that I imagine the ghost of Cole Porter HimSelf spinning the period music that plays in the background.
It is appropriate to think about the winter holidays, not just because they will be here before we know it but because autumn is the gateway to the dark half of the year. At the equinox, we achieved the perfect balance between shadow and light as the earth, poised in tranquil suspension between sun and moon, experienced an equal amount of daylight and starlight. But even as we appreciated that moment of perfect balance, the scales were tilting, and dark hours began to overtake light ones. The eternal journey continues towards the winter solstice, around which the winter holidays arrange themselves. That journey is marked midway by All Hallow’s Eve, an important holiday known religiously as Samhain and secularly as Halloween.
From pagans for whom it is a night of both celebration and solemnity to school kids of all ages for whom it is the night of tricks and treats, Halloween is the official holiday of Greenwich Village. The Halloween parade has been a tradition since 1973, when theatre artists aspired to create a spectacular street happening based on the ethos of the holiday. One of the founders was Ralph Lee, a master puppeteer who was one of my teachers in grad school. Ralph and the co-founders of the parade, who had been theatre artists since the heyday of street theatre in the 1960s, had a large backstock of puppets and masks from that work. They put these to use along with music, street performers and actors to entice watchers into joining the parade itself. How thunderstruck many of those spectators must have been, for, appropriately, that first parade was not announced. It just manifested on the streets in a blast of color and noise that was perfectly in spirit with the happening of a community-based final harvest festival.
The spirit of shock, joy, and celebration remains in the contemporary Halloween parade, which along with the Thanksgiving parade and the Pride march is New York City's largest such event. The Halloween parade swarms its loud, gaudy way down Sixth avenue to culminate in a free-for-all at Jefferson Market. Local news stations cover the event live, with everyone from news anchors to costume designers to lifestyle writers taking the podium to share their thoughts on the proceedings. Citizens and visitors dive right into the revelries along with the jugglers and street musicians and puppeteers and mummers. The creativity and expression of the Halloween parade perfectly echo both the spiritual legacy of the night and the free-spirit legacy of the Village. Though the traditional monsters abound from vampires and werewolves to robots and aliens, the best costumes result from simple creativity. Liberate a refrigerator box from a streetside delivery. Spray-paint it gold and cut an aperture. Put on your gypsy finery and rig the box over your shoulders. Just as sure as you can say "deposit a quarter and Madame Zora will tell your future," you're a fortune telling machine. Punch eye holes in that same box and wheat paste it with oceanic gift wrap from the 99 cent store, and you're an aquarium.
Halloween is perfectly positioned between the quickening of pulse that arrives with Labor Day and back to school and the logistical aerobics that commence at Thanksgiving and proceed straight through Christmas to New Year’s. As are all seasons, autumn is transitory, and, as befits a holiday whose root is transition, Halloween is the high water mark for autumn pleasures. The leaves are showing their richest colors and the evening chill is at its most agreeable. The rich flavor of pumpkin and heady fragrance of spice appear not just on our dessert board but in our beer steins, our latte cups, our pasta bowls, even our votive cups. Add to this the delightful fun of scary stories and the touching stories of monsters who need our love, and we understand that the most poetic of seasons is poetic for a reason. After summer, with its expansive themes of travel and leisure, autumn is the return to the hearth, the security of structure, the embrace of home.
Shops are signaling readiness for the autumn holidays with a fervor that I don’t remember seeing for years. Walking the Flatiron and SoHo that weekend, I saw appropriately scary or homey displays (or both) everywhere from Crate and Barrel and Pier 1 to West Elm and Fish’s Eddy. At Pottery Barn, I was delighted to find a string of lights designed as caged crows. These birds, which represent both intellect and dread, find a welcome perch in the spooky, scholarly atmosphere of our home office.
But if name brand window-shopping is one of the delights of city living, it is the small shops that give our neighborhoods character, just as they do on main streets throughout the country. It is my autumn tradition to spend a chilly Saturday afternoon on my favorite such stretch in the West Village. A handful of old-fashioned Halloween candy from Li-Lac is the perfect companion for a leisurely stroll along dew-slick cobblestones and storefronts glowing amber. I often find The Golden Rule hosting a wine tasting behind the leaded windows of their storefront on Hudson Street. I've written before about McNulty’s, whose caffeinated embrace pours right out of an historic doorway on Christopher Street. A pound of their spiced pumpkin coffee resides in our urban kitchen from Labor Day straight through Thanksgiving, and gifts of French Roast Java Mountain Supreme will be tucked with jars of homemade jam into Christmas parcels when that time comes.
This year, I was delighted to encounter new businesses that suggest signals of faith in the economic future. The tiny Meadow delighted my epicurean heart and palate with a dentist’s nightmare selection of imported chocolate and an apothecary’s dream selection of bitters. I will alternate using Bitter Tears’ sassy Lucille and sexy Lolita bitters to anoint my Manhattans until the holiday season, when I will switch to Black Russians. For that season, both gifts given and hinted for will be found at LEO Design. This is not strictly a new business but one relocated from the recent unfortunate gentrification of Bleecker Street. This shop's selection of pieces from the American Arts and Crafts school is so carefully curated and beautifully displayed that I imagine the ghost of Cole Porter HimSelf spinning the period music that plays in the background.
It is appropriate to think about the winter holidays, not just because they will be here before we know it but because autumn is the gateway to the dark half of the year. At the equinox, we achieved the perfect balance between shadow and light as the earth, poised in tranquil suspension between sun and moon, experienced an equal amount of daylight and starlight. But even as we appreciated that moment of perfect balance, the scales were tilting, and dark hours began to overtake light ones. The eternal journey continues towards the winter solstice, around which the winter holidays arrange themselves. That journey is marked midway by All Hallow’s Eve, an important holiday known religiously as Samhain and secularly as Halloween.
From pagans for whom it is a night of both celebration and solemnity to school kids of all ages for whom it is the night of tricks and treats, Halloween is the official holiday of Greenwich Village. The Halloween parade has been a tradition since 1973, when theatre artists aspired to create a spectacular street happening based on the ethos of the holiday. One of the founders was Ralph Lee, a master puppeteer who was one of my teachers in grad school. Ralph and the co-founders of the parade, who had been theatre artists since the heyday of street theatre in the 1960s, had a large backstock of puppets and masks from that work. They put these to use along with music, street performers and actors to entice watchers into joining the parade itself. How thunderstruck many of those spectators must have been, for, appropriately, that first parade was not announced. It just manifested on the streets in a blast of color and noise that was perfectly in spirit with the happening of a community-based final harvest festival.
The spirit of shock, joy, and celebration remains in the contemporary Halloween parade, which along with the Thanksgiving parade and the Pride march is New York City's largest such event. The Halloween parade swarms its loud, gaudy way down Sixth avenue to culminate in a free-for-all at Jefferson Market. Local news stations cover the event live, with everyone from news anchors to costume designers to lifestyle writers taking the podium to share their thoughts on the proceedings. Citizens and visitors dive right into the revelries along with the jugglers and street musicians and puppeteers and mummers. The creativity and expression of the Halloween parade perfectly echo both the spiritual legacy of the night and the free-spirit legacy of the Village. Though the traditional monsters abound from vampires and werewolves to robots and aliens, the best costumes result from simple creativity. Liberate a refrigerator box from a streetside delivery. Spray-paint it gold and cut an aperture. Put on your gypsy finery and rig the box over your shoulders. Just as sure as you can say "deposit a quarter and Madame Zora will tell your future," you're a fortune telling machine. Punch eye holes in that same box and wheat paste it with oceanic gift wrap from the 99 cent store, and you're an aquarium.
Halloween is perfectly positioned between the quickening of pulse that arrives with Labor Day and back to school and the logistical aerobics that commence at Thanksgiving and proceed straight through Christmas to New Year’s. As are all seasons, autumn is transitory, and, as befits a holiday whose root is transition, Halloween is the high water mark for autumn pleasures. The leaves are showing their richest colors and the evening chill is at its most agreeable. The rich flavor of pumpkin and heady fragrance of spice appear not just on our dessert board but in our beer steins, our latte cups, our pasta bowls, even our votive cups. Add to this the delightful fun of scary stories and the touching stories of monsters who need our love, and we understand that the most poetic of seasons is poetic for a reason. After summer, with its expansive themes of travel and leisure, autumn is the return to the hearth, the security of structure, the embrace of home.
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