Between work, moving, and being without the internet at home for a week, newelty has been silent. Apologies about that. But the good news is that some minor travel adventures lie ahead–in the very near future. Next week, I’m going to New York for a few days!

I’ve always loved New York at the Thanksgiving/Christmas time of year. It’s always so evocative of my own idea of the city–crisp scarf-and-sweater weather, with beautiful store displays in every window.

Ever since it came out, I meant to blog about my favorite new New York song to add to my previous list of reasons to love the city.

(The big reveal after the jump.)

“Who Are You New York?” is so New Yorky. Watch the video (shot in Nice, France–hence the French chatter for the first bit):

If you like the song, you can download it via this great write-up of it on Stereogum.

Sorry for the radio silence, neweltites. Both of us have been slammed with work, but, happily, my work has taken me to the Big Apple, where I took this photo in the warm summerish weather yesterday.

As already mentioned a couple dozen million times, we ♥ New York.

More soon, once the travel adventures are through!

“There’s nothing that represents the ongoing degradation of the very soulful soul of New York than the invasion of cookie-cutter-branded theme eateries. ESPN Zone! Hawaiian Tropic Zone! Planet Hollywood! The Goddamned Olive Garden! …

[But] if you want to see a theme restaurant that’s really flourishing, visit Keith McNally’s jam-packed new pizzeria, Pulino’s, on the formerly gritty Bowery. Like all of McNally’s super-successful restaurants—from Pastis to Balthazar to Schiller’s to Morandi—it offers a cozy, charming, carefully curated experience-in-a-box. Now, that experience is undeniably more sophisticated and deft than, say, Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. But it’s also undeniably the result of a meticulous formula, one built as much on replicating a particular fantasy experience as is any Rainforest Cafe. The experience here, though, is a “darling, tucked-away bistro you happily discovered”—except that now you can pretty much stumble over one on every other block…

No, these eateries don’t feature giant TV screens, Arnold Schwarzenegger movie memorabilia, grossly inedible food, or animatronic singing animals. We’re much too refined for that. Instead, the theme in these theme restaurants is My, What Good Taste You Have.”

Good lord, that summary just could not be more awesome.

It’s a reminder to me for the next time I want to wax rhapsodic about a precious–and of course, completely unique!–little travel experience I had, that we’re all on the slippery slope that leads to the “authentic Italian” 16-cheese special dish at the Olive Garden.

Cynics Who Liked This Also Liked: “Hidden Tuscany,” a.k.a. Tuscany Is the ‘Twilight’ of Travel Destinations

I have a deep and abiding love of cities. Some people long for wide open spaces. Not me. There’s nothing better for filling up the novelty-meter than time spent walking a city end to end.

Which is why I love this announcement about freely available pianos sprinkled all over New York City, part of an art project called “Play Me, I’m Yours.”

Evidently, the same artist, Luke Jerram, also did something similar in London last year (this write-up in the New York Times provides a good background on the project).

I am a sucker for happenstance things like this–I’m easily sidelined by the beauty of a single violin ringing out from a subway station, much less a piano. This is the stuff that reminds me how much I love cities, and the random magic that’s possible in them.

Speaking of random happenstance, these have made the rounds already, but they’re still worth mentioning.

Have you seen the video of people frozen in Grand Central Station, in New York, puzzling the commuters?

Or the video of dancers in Antwerp’s Central Station? (Staged by a company instead of impromptu, but still fun.)

Or Improv Everywhere (responsible for the Grand Central action) inviting fellow New Yorkers to look up more?

Or the more recent Glee flash mob in Seattle? Or the dance party that inspired it in Rome? Jazz hands, everyone!

If you are able to live in a great city at this exact moment in time, these are all good reasons to get out of the car (maybe on an awesome bike the makes you happy), look around, and appreciate how lucky we are. And if not, now’s a perfect time to plan your next trip to Venice, London, Tokyo, New York, Barcelona…

Sometimes there’s a fail that’s so spectacular, it needs double the action, double the fun, which is why we’re giving you a fly-on-the-newelty-wall approach with the messiness that is the Sex and the City 2 trailer.

Microwave yourself a 100-calorie popcorn pack, watch the insane trailer for Sex and the City: Because SJP’s Townhouses Don’t Come Cheap, and join us as we discuss.

What happens when the New Yorkiest of all pop-culture treats relocates…to the Middle East?

The ladies appear to have turned into Cathy cartoon cliches of themselves, and yet still we can’t decide if we’ll watch, Dhabi or no. The verdict? Most likely. Because it’s like watching a car wreck. Or licking a battery. But it’s definitely not likely to make the next edition of travel movies we love.

Lia: Just to begin: I will admit to being concerned about the appearance of Liza Minnelli. And that jacket with the horns makes me seriously angry.

Betty: Totally. But let’s focus on the location for a minute. Why are they going to Abu Dhabi? A vacation spot for the fabulous four? Thankfully, they don’t go to Dubai, but still. It’s bizarre. And don’t even get me started on Aidan.

Lia: What? Team Aidan! Mr. Big is totally 2006, pre-Goldman Sachs meltdown. You know he sold gillions of mortgage-backed securities. Aidan is all Indiana-Jones-at-the Ace Hotel hotness.

Betty: OMG SHUT UP.

Lia: There better be desert nookie.

Betty: WHY IS AIDEN IN ABU DHABI? Also, in case you missed it: WE HAVE RIDDEN THAT TRAIN.

Lia: Because Michael Patrick King saw Gwynnie in Morocco and was like, you know what? Sign us up for something just like that.

Betty: SHUT. UP.

Lia: I love it when you get shouty.

Betty: Carrie has no chemistry with Aiden.

Lia: Mr. Big can’t even bring himself to lose his belly for the roll role. Hello, lazy! Plus, I thought you were all grumpy because it left NYC. Is it just me, or does the whole going to Abu Dhabi seem a little like that Bradys episode when they went to Hawaii? Like, a little desperate?

Betty: I just don’t think those gals would EVER go there. They’d go to Paris. They’d go to London.

Lia: Except they did Paris for the all-expense-paid trip…I mean finale…remember?

Betty: Why Abu Dhabi? It’s so effing random. Also, the whole subplot of Charlotte and Miranda bonding over the kid thing? They have NOTHING in common. They’re tired…so let’s go to Abu Dhabi?

Lia: I’m sure they just got tax breaks out the wazoo and stayed in five-star resorts. Resorts with golf courses in the desert–your favorite.

Betty: Doesn’t it just seem totally silly that during the worst recession ever they’re staying at this dumb place in the desert that was backed by the craziness of the western financial system? Like, aren’t they maybe hurting a tad bit? Let’s do the math.

Sam works in PR. She has zero clients right now. Not going to Abu Dhabi.

Charlotte’s hubby is a divorce lawyer–pepes aren’t getting divorced because they can’t afford it. She best put her East Side coop up for sale.

Miranda is an attorney and most likely is hurting as well. And her hubby owns a bar. It’s most likely gone out of business.

Lia: OMG. You’re writing Sex and the Downer.

Betty: And the clincher is Carrie: HER NEWSPAPER NO LONGER EXISTS AND BIG HAS MOST LIKELY BEEN CANNED. NOT GOING TO ABU DHABI ON VACATION.

Lia: It’s not that I disagree. It’s just, hello, SATC kinda stopped being cool a while ago, and people don’t care about reality. Their audience wants Charlie’s Angel’s-style escapism. Have you seen Dancing with the Stars?

Betty: Touche.

Lia: We saw the first SATC together, right? Do you remember how depressing the audience was? They’re not thinking of New York as the fifth character–they’re watching The Bachelor, only with smutty parts. The audience is only in it for their feather boats and plastic, bedazzled champagne glasses…like the kind we saw opening weekend.

Betty: Uh yeah..while we were drinking actual champagne?

Lia: From a can, though, which is still a little sketch.

Betty: True. But ghetto fabulous.

So here’s my passionate defense of the city as an awesome place for travelers to enjoy, and why I love it.

1. Because New Yorkers appreciate novelty.

I wanted to see the Whitney Biennial on this trip. Like most people who walk through the Biennial, I don’t love everything in it. But I can feel my novelty-meter being filled to the brim.

Of everything in the show, my favorites were:

• James Casebere, for his insane, hyperrealistic-but-staged photos of tract housing.
• The art collective The Bruce High Quality Foundation, for their installation that has a video about America, where it talks about the country as if it’s an actual person. (You can check out a shaky-cam home video of it here.)
• Babette Mangolte, for How to Look (surreptitiously photographed above), with people’s heads and singular skyscrapers repeated to almost become abstract forms.

2. Because New Yorkers don’t mess around.

I had literally only been in New York for a few minutes (and in Jersey, to be technical), when I heard the following exchange in front of me. It was so succinct, it was like they were talking in tweets.

Middle-aged man with a heavy New York accent: “So you saw ‘Crazy Heart’? How did you find it?”

Middle-aged woman with a heavy New York accent: “Drunk.”

If only most travel writers were so concise (myself included).

3. Because not only do you not need a rental car to get around, it’s a phenomenally bad idea.

It’s been over a year since I was last in New York, and I couldn’t believe how many bicyclists were on the streets. I love Amsterdam and its many bike-bedecked streets, and New Amsterdam is following in its footsteps. For pete’s sake–even the city’s gossip columnists are on bikes. (Well, one is anyway.)

I was able to get in and around New York using Newark’s AirTrain–a service I love for its European-style efficiency and design.

4. Because a restless energy pushes the city to become better.

I realize this wasn’t always the case, back in the 1970s, when bankruptcy loomed.

But this visit, I got to see the new, pedestrian-friendly Times Square for myself. I love that whole chunks of the city are reinvented between visits. Those tables below sit where taxis once pushed down the street.

5. Because New York inspires me to up my style game.

It’s easy to get complacent. But then I see this woman working the subway like it’s a runway.

I felt a little creepy taking a stalker-cam iPhone shot, but seriously–I wanted to own everything she had on, especially those shoes.

6. Because the second I leave, I immediately have something to add to my visit list for next time.

I haven’t made it to the High Line yet, and if Marc’s upcoming bookstore (yes, we’re on a first-name basis) had been open when I was there, it would have been a top priority. He has great books in his shop on Melrose in L.A., and I’d love to see his curated collection.

7. Central Park.

8. Because New Yorkers are in love with their city.

I kept thinking of these two songs while I was there, I think because I was staying at the Ace Hotel and using the Empire State Building as my landmark as I walked around. I love how the building is the guest star in both of these videos, separated by over a decade.

Can you believe that no one has been savvy enough (or sassy enough) to use that before? Welcome to the first Gen X hotel.

Shu hairbrush, room key, black coffee. All my bases are covered.

My love of novelty drove me to the Ace Hotel in NYC. The Ace started in downtown Seattle, about a mile away from where I currently live. How would it translate to NYC?

Plus, the room came in at about a hundred bucks below what I’ve spent my last few visits to New York, when I stayed at the Library Hotel and its sister property, the Hotel Elysee.

I booked a teeny room at the Ace, but since I was staying by myself–and every room in NYC is teeny, in my experience–it seemed worth the gamble.

First impression: The lobby is too cool for school. (You can check out a photo on Wallpaper’s rave review.) I literally couldn’t find the front desk. I knew that the Ace had a gift shop, and based on all the stuff for sale around the area that had staff behind the counter, I assumed the actual check-in desk had to be somewhere else. Oops. A bellman rescued me, and let me know that the desk with all the display cases was the actual front desk.

When they assigned me a room on a low floor, I assumed I was getting the customary girl room: Women don’t complain, so give her the former closet. When I was researching hotels as a solo traveler for the Guidebook Company That Dare Not Speak Its Name, I would often get this treatment.

The front desk guy assured me it would be quiet. Um, OK.

Then I encountered this preachy sign by the elevator:

OMG, STFU and get me to my room already.

When I walked into the room, everything changed. I loved it immediately. It had a shared aesthetic that I love of old typewriters, World War II-era light fixtures, and wool blankets. In short, it reminded me of my grandfather, by way of a Brooklyn hipster. I started poking around the room.

After I settled in–and realized that, indeed, I wasn’t hearing thumping bass from the party in the lobby, I decided that I might actually like this hotel. I realized that the Ace aesthetic is just…chatty. Inanimate objects have opinions. I was charmed.

There was no view to speak of, and my room’s lone window opened into a sort of wide air shaft. I didn’t care, because I slept in relative quiet in a comfy bed.

Ultimately, Ace could have been an example of style over substance, which was the issue that I had with the Library Hotel. But because the hotel group rehabbed what was an existing old hotel (with good bones), the experience was a great one.

Not everything was perfect. I’m not a fan of hotels that are cheap about sample-size lotion, shampoo, etc. by putting it in a giant wall dispenser (and try to dress it up as being environmental), and I dislike “pet-friendly” hotels, because, let’s be honest, bad things happen to carpets when dogs are involved.

But these are minor quibbles. The hotel was very close to the subway lines I needed (as I previously determined by power-using Google Maps). It was walking distance from Penn Station, which was great. Just this morning, I read a piece in New York magazine christening this unnamed neighborhood “NoMad,” essentially because of the influence of the Ace and the proximity to the always-appealing Flatiron Building.

All of this is secondary, though, to the ultimate reason why I consider a hotel  a winner. The Ace gave me the single most important thing I require in a hotel: Quiet.

Notes about this entry: We never take money for anything we recommend. Ever. I paid for this hotel room. I also made my pics black-and-white, because it went with the hipster grandpa vibe.

Here are the four I’ll be reading this month.

Pagan Spain by Richard Wright

I had never heard of this book, but I was wandering through the remainder bin at Powell’s book store and picked it up. How’s this for an opener?

“In torrid August, 1954, I was under the blue skies of the Midi, just a few hours from the Spanish frontier. To my right stretched the flat, green fields of southern France; to my left lay a sweep of sand beyond which the Mediterranean heaved and sparkled. I was alone. I had no commitments. Seated in my car, I held the steering wheel in my hands.”

The whole sentiment of that opening bit reminds me of a favorite Rufus Wainright song (“one way is Rome and the other way is Mecca / on either side/ on either side of our motorbike”). Listen to the song in this live performance on YouTube:

“When I get back / I will dream in Barnes & Noble.” Yep, that’s the general idea (although hopefully a Powell’s or one of these great bookstores instead).

Creative Spaces: Urban Homes of Artists and Innovators by Francesca Gavin

You know a book is for a certain kind of artsy type when the publisher feels the need to stick a bright yellow sticker on the front over with the actual book title on it. They probably realized that at the printers.

Sometimes, when I daydream about living on a houseboat in Amsterdam, I imagine that it will be filled with flea-market portraits. I’d have the kind of oddly beautiful hallway you find in these kinds of  books.

An example from my future home in London:

Japan’s Cultural Code Words by Boyé De Mente

I’m a little intimidated by this one for a few reasons: no pictures (just being honest, folks), a publisher I’ve never heard of (Tuttle Publishing of Toyko, Singapore…and Rutland, Vermont), and a formidable list of words that seem to mostly be about business ideology. I’ll read at this one for a while and see how I do.

FYI, I picked this up at a Kinokuniya bookstore in Seattle’s own Uwajimaya grocery-store-slash-food-court-slash-kimono-shop. It’s one of my favorite places in the entire city.

I ♥ Your Style by Amanda Brooks

I’m so looking forward to this book. From the outside, it might not look like a travel book, but to me it is for two reasons:

• I don’t buy souvenirs in the traditional sense. No snow globes or shot glasses, please. But I’ll buy a soft surfer-girl T-shirt that reminds me of a day in the sun in Venice, California; a Ted Baker dress at Selfridges to make me feel like Kate Moss; a pair of flats at Maison de Bonneterie in Amsterdam that I’ll wear while riding my Dutch bike at home. I will save all year to be able to buy a treat like this to take home when I travel.
• The fashion icons in this book–having only flipped through it–are often so incredible because they are associated with a certain place. Here are some women profiled in the book as examples:

Peggy Guggenheim = Venice

Early Madonna = NYC

Bardot + Deneuve = Paris, of course  (even down to the berets!)

Guess what? In Manhattan, just about everything is close to the subway. But with a little fiddling around with Google Maps, you can figure out how to save yourself time and sore feet while you’re still at your desk, daydreaming about your NYC vacation.

Ready for the six steps?

One additional note: It’s worth mentioning that these steps assume you’ll be using the subway often, and you won’t want to be walking miles in order to do so. If any of these maps are making you squint, you can click through for the full resolution.

Step 1: Sign in to Google Maps and create a new map.

Head to maps.google.com and click on “My Maps.” Name it New York or something more clever. You can choose to share it with the world or not. I named my map “NYC.”

Step 2: Find somewhere you’re going to visit in New York.

I’ll be flying into Newark and taking the train over to Penn Station. So to map that, I:

• Search for Penn Station New York City
• Click on the correct pin
• Click on “Save to…”
• Find my NYC map in the dropdown
• Hit the save button

Step 3: Repeat for a bunch more stuff–hotels where you’re considering booking a room, sights you want to see, stores and restaurants you plan to visit.

For example, I’m deciding between two hotels: the Pod Hotel and the Ace Hotel. I search for both and repeat the same steps as above, clicking to save them to my NYC map. I also add pins for Uniqlo and Top Shop, since I want to shop at those stores during my visit (and since I’ll have extra cash from taking the subway instead of cabs!). I also add the Whitney, since I have plans to see the Biennial on Saturday. My final map has about a half-dozen blue pins on it.

Step 4: If you lose your map through clicking and adding pins, find it through the “My Maps” option on the left side.

The left column of the map is basically there to help you find your way around–it lists all your maps, includes a big “edit” button to let you back in to edit it, and shows you past searches.

Step 5: Overlay the subway map to see how far sites are from the subway lines.

Mouse over “More” and click the checkbox for “Transit.” Google Maps will overlay the subway lines on top of your existing map.

Step 6: Use this info to make a bunch of decisions to make your trip easier.

I’ll only be in New York for one night. With such a crazy schedule, I want to make sure the majority of my time is spent doing what I want to do, not spending a hour or more each way going uptown and downtown.

The Ace Hotel and the Pod Hotel are exactly the same price for the same-sized room. Looking at the map shows me that I can walk to the Ace from Penn Station when I arrive, and that the yellow subway line (the R or the W) will easily get me downtown to the Soho-area shopping I want to do.

If I stay at the Pod Hotel, it’ll be a straight shot up the green line to get to the Whitney, but since I’ll probably be heading there from downtown, it’s no big win, since I can just stay on R or W (the yellow line( and change to the 4, 5, or 6 (the green line).

I chose to stay at the Ace, because while both hotels are close to the subway, it’s is really close to the subway–and it’s the subway line I would be using to get to all the places I want to visit.

You can go to the map I created, although you may have to select “transit” to get the subway overlay shown above.

I love the idea of bringing Dutch-bike-love back to U.S. cities, but New York seems the most daunting place of all to contemplate biking through. (Although I also thought NYC would be the last place for a Siena-style pedestrian-friendly piazza, and look how they’ve proved me wrong with Piazza Times Square.)

The solution appears to be: to be a cyclist in New York, take a New York attitude, according to Village Voice columnist Michael Musto:

Things I love about this video:

• Absolutely no spandex. Instead, a jaunty scarf.
• Biking between cabs, which is my favorite aspect of biking in downtown Seattle–it just seems so incongruous.
• His quotes: “I don’t care about the environment, but it’s nice that someone does.” Hilarious.

No helmet though, which seems slightly insane to me, but oh-so Dutch.

Hat tip to Copenhagen Cycle Chic for introducing me to this video and to StreetFilms.org for making it in the first place.